AAMI Roundup

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

AAMI

AAMI Roundup

Mary K. Logan Grant Awarded to Novel Sterility Assurance Research

The AAMI Foundation has named the 2022 recipients of the Mary K. Logan Research Award Program – a team of researchers who are investigating consistent methods for directly linking the efficacy of medical device sterile processing practices to patient safety. The project, What Counts in Sterile Processing Departments: Measuring Defects and Responses, has earned an award in the amount of $52,685, paid to Penn State University (PSU), where the research team is based.

“The overall objective of this project is to determine how SPDs approach measurement of processes, defects, and outcomes, which factors they feel most impact their effectiveness, and gather such information from SPDs across the country,” said Jessica Williams, associate professor at PSU. “Despite processing millions of instruments each year and being an essential component of accreditation, these departments are often taken for granted by hospital administration, health care providers and even health services researchers unless something goes wrong, like delayed surgeries or infection outbreaks traced to unclean instruments.”

At the center of the team’s hypothesis is an understanding that even high-performing sterile processing departments (SPDs) may have different strategies to ensure they are effectively preventing patient infection. And despite efforts from standards developers like AAMI to bring end-user experts together for information sharing, the socio-economic factors that influence a department’s best practices remain difficult to account for.

“While there is ample research and [manufacturer-provided instructions for use] about specific cleaning, sterilization, and disinfection technologies and processes, there is relatively little about the human and organizational side of SPDs,” said Williams.

The researchers aim to survey up to 10 directors from high-performing sterile processing departments in an initial survey, following up with in-depth analysis and a large-scale (~300 participants) cross-sectional survey of responses, human factors, and patient safety, among other factors. By looking at common strategies and best practices among SPDs for measuring and responding to defects in their processes, the work will help establish clear benchmarks for responsible departments and future studies.

“We believe our results will be used practically by SPDs who are eager to learn from peers,” Williams concluded. “We also expect that our results will be used by researchers studying patient safety, as our data will provide an essential first step of describing the current landscape of SPD defect measurement as well as showing preliminary pathways through which SPD matters for patient safety.”

AAMI Partners with AmbiFi to Offer CuttingEdge Medical Process Support Tool

AAMI has announced a strategic partnership with AmbiFi, an advanced software as a service (SaaS) performance support company. Ambifi provides mobile-first, real-time, hands-free, support for complex procedures while ensuring real-time process documentation and benchmarking.

“We continue to leverage proven technologies to better serve our members and stakeholders,” noted AAMI President and CEO Pamela Arora. “The cognitive load on all health care professionals continues to challenge the safe and effective use of health technology. AAMI is expanding its offerings to include AmbiFi’s revolutionary moment-ofneed performance support. Ambifi has the potential to transform the

execution of complex medical device processes, enabling greater consistency, quality and transparency.”

Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, AmbiFi leverages ambient computing and performance science to empower experts to easily transform industry standards, guidelines, procedural documentation and expertise into ambient intelligent copilots, called “ambiis.” Deployable on secure mobile devices, including smartphones, tablets and smart glasses, these copilots may provide guidance and support during the execution of high-stakes processes, such as the processing of medical devices or even the training of surgeons.

“AmbiFi is a proven platform that launched in the aviation industry and is now used by thousands of pilots globally. After pivoting to health care, they have proven their platform across a wide range of clinical use cases,” said Robert Burroughs, senior vice president of education at AMMI. “Our goal is to bring this powerful capability to our many stakeholders. Given the incredible breadth and complexity of process that must be executed throughout a medical device’s life cycle, this tool has the potential to be transformative.”

As a part of the strategic partnership between AAMI and AmbiFi, AAMI has adopted the AmbiFi platform and will leverage AAMI content and subject matter expertise to develop medical device, sterile processing and healthcare technology ambiis for use by AAMI members and stakeholders. In addition, AAMI will work directly with medical device manufacturers, healthcare delivery organizations, and independent service organizations and educators to develop custom solutions utilizing the AmbiFi platform.

“AAMI is the de facto world leader driving the safe and effective use of healthcare technology via their standards and education,” said James Sharpe, cofounder of AmbiFi. “We can’t wait to see what they can do with the AmbiFi platform at their disposal, and we look forward to working together closely to support AAMI members and stakeholders.”